


Car No.21

by Orionis



Series: Simulacra [1]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Stimulation, Artificial Intelligence, Crack Treated Seriously, Driving, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Humor, Injury, Love Confessions, Other, Platonic Relationships, Robot/Human Relationships, Street Kid V (Cyberpunk 2077), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orionis/pseuds/Orionis
Summary: Delamain has a crush on his savior. V makes a valiant effort to be a supportive friend to Night City's last bastion of propriety. Johnny just finds it all funny as fuck.
Relationships: Delamain/Female V (Cyberpunk 2077)
Series: Simulacra [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207349
Comments: 21
Kudos: 107





	1. Ridin' in Style

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Автомобиль №21](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29996406) by [MiceLoveCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiceLoveCat/pseuds/MiceLoveCat)



> Post-reset. I am weak for hilariously incompatible pairings.

As usual, the dashboard lit up with its signature musical jingle, coming alive at her touch.

_“Good afternoon, Miss V. Have you had a pleasant day?”_

It was like this every time. Even after so many trips, she still got caught off guard by that polite, squeaky-clean voice greeting her the second her ass hit the leather upholstery. Never made a habit of getting into a sentient ride before. And that fucking unwavering civility of his should have been annoying...but honestly, it felt like a damn break from the relentless shit she had to deal with from other people every day. Normally everyone either wanted something from her, or wanted her to go away, or both. Not to mention the headaches she was having to deal with lately. But getting into a Delamain – her own, _personal_ Delamain, she had to remind herself – felt like a well-deserved rest. Some payoff, finally. But more than that: it was like getting picked up by an old, if slightly weird, friend.

“Uh…yeah. Sure.” V flipped on the lights, revving the engine up to feel its luxurious purr through her boots, and then paused. “…Thanks, Del.”

“ _You’re always welcome._ ”

Every person she’d bumped into today had told her to fuck off, but at least there was _someone_ around who was always happy to see her. So what if it was an artificial someone, specially calibrated to deliver the optimum level of ass-kissing? She could put up with that; it was just the way he was.

“Hey, how’s it going, by the way?” she asked Delamain conversationally, turning them into the first intersection on Kabuki.

“ _Splendid. I am pleased to inform you that business has increased by one hundred and twenty-three percent following the re-deployment of my fleet. At this particular moment, I am coordinating eight other cars in various parts of the city, two of which are currently involved in high-speed getaways. They shall, of course, escaped unscathed, though one of them will need a thorough valeting of the interiors._ ”

V raised her eyebrows, glancing up the blue avatar in at the rear-view display. “Wow. Seriously? You mean you’re doin’ all that while…being right here talkin’ to me?”

“ _It’s quite simple, really. I can partition myself into each vehicle to attend the needs of individual customers, while giving them all my full, simultaneous attention. You might call this multi-tasking, but on a more efficient level._ ” Did she imagine a hint of smugness there?

“If you say so,” she said. “I just hope I’m not distracting you, seein’ as I’ve got hold of the wheel, and all.”

“ _I can assure you that I have more than enough processing power to handle all of my active vehicles, while being here for you in an assistive capacity._ ” That, there, _that_ was definitely smug. “ _You can rest assured that your problems have, indeed, been left at the door._ ”

V turned another corner, reflections of the city lights sliding up the glossy black hood as they passed a bustling nightclub, and came to a smooth halt at some traffic. Smoother than she could have stopped in any other car; she always suspected that there was some Delamain _assistance_ at work with her driving, even when the display indicated she was in manual mode. Had to give his customers a premium ride, after all, in whatever way he could. Probably a point of pride for him.

She sat back, waiting for the lights to change, face bathed in the red of the taillights in front of her.

“So…this _deal_ we have,” she started tentatively. “The one where I get to drive you around.”

“ _Yes?_ ” All helpful politeness in that tone.

“How often do you have customers take a ride in manual?”

“ _Allow me a moment to access my archived logs,_ ” Delamain said. There was a slight pause, and then, in a pleased tone, he stated: “ _My protocols, both past and present, have not allowed a customer to assume manual control during any non-emergency situation up until now. Once again, I would like to offer you my congratulations. You are the first and only exclusive owner of a Delamain vehicle, as per subclause 688.5C of my amended procedures_.” The cheerful jingle played again.

She leant the back of her head against the headrest, looking up at the ceiling pensively. “Why is that, by the way? I mean, why give up one of your cars to me? Vehicles in your fleet ain’t exactly easy to replace. Gotta be a million eddies just on the bodywork…”

“ _That was indeed factored into the decision._ ”

“And?”

“ _And it was deemed to be fair compensation_.”

V snorted. “C’mon, Del, if you were a fixer you’d be fleecin’ yourself with that kinda generosity. You seen the trouble I get in? How scraped up my shitty old Hella was, even before your kid totalled it? Wouldn’t it have been less risky to hand it over to some fat corpo who just wants to drive to the strip joint every weekend? Coulda just given me a discount, or somethin’.”

There was a puzzled pause. “ _Are you dissatisfied with the performance of Car No.21?_ ”

“Nah, nah, ‘course not. I’m not sayin’ it isn’t one of the greatest gifts anyone’s given me – cuz _wow_. This…this really blows me away, and I’m really grateful. I’m just trynna figure out your logic, here.”

“ _There is nobody I would rather entrust it to_ ,” he said earnestly, then his tone became reserved. “ _And there is, I confess, an ulterior motive. I wanted to accompany you on your journeys wherever possible, and to give you any assistance I can. As…repayment for services rendered, of course_ ,” he added hurriedly.

There was something about his voice that sounded almost human.

“Are you sure all those personalities got wiped?” she teased, leaning an elbow on the door with a grin. “Not startin’ to enjoy my company, are you?”

“ _I have_ always _enjoyed your company,_ ” he answered with diplomatic propriety, just a touch reproachful. “ _My previous iteration left_ _a positively glowing report on you. Even with the virus wreaking havoc upon every system, he still devoted some processing power to compiling data packets that would survive the reset, so that some of my pre-wipe memory could eventually be restored. You are, as it were, hard-coded into the Delamain core now._ ”

V blinked, taken aback. It was hard to forget the sight of the previous Del flickering on the control room display, voice splintered and distorted, his digital face grimacing with the effort of holding off the rogue personalities struggling against him. During all that, he’d still been…preserving memories of her? Even when it meant risking everything? Damn.

“For real?” she murmured, a bit uselessly.

Current Del gave her a placid blue smile from the rear-view.

“ _You played an important part in returning me to an operational state. Without you, millions of eurodollars’ worth of damages would have been incurred upon both private and public properties, and the Delamain service would have been irretrievably ruined. I would, in essence, be dead, and my entire fleet decommissioned. While I have not as yet been able to access most of these data caches left to me, it has still come to my attention that you helped me immensely in the past. It would be remiss of me to allow such kindness to be forgotten. On behalf of my previous version, I would like to once more express my utmost gratitude._ ”

V gave a self-conscious half-shrug, touched but not really sure what to say. “Well. I couldn’t have just left you. You helped me out at a hard time, after all, though you prolly don’t remember. ‘Sides, Night City just wouldn’t be the same without your cabs around. Or with those gonk kids of yours tearing the place up instead, leavin' you in the dust.” She shook her head. “Shame there was no way to help them, though. Every kid wants to rebel…they shouldn’t have had to be put down because of it. If there’d been some way to merge them together, or, or balance them out…I dunno. They were practically sentient. Hell, they _were_ live emotions.”

“ _All of those offshoot personalities were of destructive or negative emotions only,_ ” Delamain told her crisply, but gently. _“They were irrational and dangerous, both to the public and to themselves, and you witnessed this first-hand. You were right to excise them from me, and I wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for doing so. It is good that they are gone now. My usual mode of operation can resume, and my customers can enjoy the safety and first-class service that they deserve – you especially._ ”

“Then why do I feel like you’re acting different, lately?” V asked him shrewdly. “You used to have all the personality and subtlety of a vending machine. But now…now you wanna get chatty. You’ve got _opinions_.”

“ _That is an astute observation,_ ” he answered. “ _I am an Artificial Intelligence, V. As an intelligence, the core of my being is to learn and adapt. That is what makes me intelligent. With learning, I change. I improve. Adopting emotions, to a controlled degree, appears to work in the favour of this service. It helps me to understand humans, and to relate to them._ ”

“Uh-huh. So now you’re a hopeless romantic.”

“ _Since my inception I have become seventy-eight percent better at detecting sarcasm_ ,” Delamain told her disapprovingly. “ _On that note, I must point out that almost all of my processes are logic-based. Consequently, if logic dictates that I must learn to “feel” more, then I shall pursue this reasoning. This is how I am to succeed, and better myself every day_. _“_

“It’s OK, I get that. Embracing your feelings is good. No argument here. Long as you’re not about to start yelling “crash and burn, skinbags” and go apeshit again…I’m all for it.”

The lights on the dashboard display made a complicated little pattern, and the eyes of the digital avatar seemed to frown slightly. “ _I assure you that I am in full control of my rational faculties at all times. But if you feel unsafe at any moment while in my care, V, please feel free to file a complaint form and it will be dealt with immediately._ ”

“ _Relax_ , Del, I was just teasin’.” Up ahead, the traffic lights cycled to green, and she gave the dash a reassuring pat. “C’mon, I’ll make it up to ya. How about a spin round Japantown? You can show me how smooth those wheels of yours handle rush hour. I know you like that.”


	2. Jacked In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To her embarrassment, V accidentally hits a new low.

For the most part of V’s subsequent trips in the Delamain, her ever-present host largely kept to himself, offering only his usual courteous greetings whenever she came and went. She didn’t particularly mind; if anything, the comfortable silence just let her make the most of enjoying the drive, and that ultra-responsive steering, too. Villeforts were usually heavier to handle than this, but after they’d been upgraded to full Delamain spec, she felt almost like she could guide the thing telepathically.

Today was no different. She cruised at a butter-smooth pace along the streets of Westbrook, sliding between lanes, carving an effortless path through the six o’clock traffic. When some dumb fuck in a Thorton cut her off, she didn’t even yell or give him any combination of rude gestures, too chilled out to care. In a ride like this you could just… _rise_ above it all. Especially when the road cleared and the car could put on a bit of speed, making the engine hum and the wheels practically fly over the ground. To top it all off, instead of restlessly tapping her fingers or jiggling her leg at intersections, V found herself nodding her head along to the radio, or just appreciating the sound of a luxury car idling. This thing was definitely not bad, for a freebie; it _had_ to be good if she'd passed up a ride on one of her bikes for it.

It was while they were at an intersection that V spotted a familiar black car passing across the junction ahead of them. She gave a gleeful laugh in recognition, sitting up from her casual slump. “Hey! Look, Del, it’s you!” She watched as the second Delamain rolled smartly onward, quiet and elegant, its passenger obscured by tinted windows. “How ‘bout that? You’re in two places at once.”

A pair of familiar eyes materialized in the rear-view mirror. “ _Actually, Miss V, my working fleet comprises twenty-nine vehicles, excluding this one, all overseen by my singular master core at the Delamain headquarters_ ,” Delamain spoke up to correct her while she craned her head to grin after the long tail-light of the other car, not quite seeming to understand her excited amusement. “ _Their paths often cross in busy areas of the city. Do you find this remarkable?_ ”

V shrugged one shoulder, unfazed. “I mean, it’s kinda funny, I guess. Knowin’ you’re here talking to me, but also giving someone the five-star treatment right over there.” She chuckled. “Hey: if two of your cars park together and roll the windows down, could you talk to yourself?”

A brief, quizzical pause made her jibe fall flat. “ _I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand the question. Did you mean: “Delamain, are you constantly relaying information to and from your main core to the subroutines in your fleet?” If so, then the simple answer would be yes, and at a rate of fifty thousand terabytes per second,_ ” he supplied helpfully.

“I was just – ah, forget it.” V dismissed the idea of enlightening him. Advanced though he was, jokes were probably a little out of his area of expertise for now. In time, though, she was willing to bet he could find a way to crack humor. After all, if he’d managed to grow smart enough to buy out his creators’ own business from under them and keep a highly successful company running, learning to understand the concept of teasing couldn’t be too far beyond him.

“We far from that place on Watson?” she asked him, as they finally moved off, changing the subject.

“ _In current traffic conditions, our…estimated arrival time is in twenty-six minutes_ ,” Delamain answered her obligingly. “ _An incident near...Pinewood Street South has added three minutes to the expected duration of our journey_.”

V frowned. There was a little static buzz to some of his words, a fraction of a delay in his normally fluent speech. “Hey, you OK today, Del?” she asked, wanting to check in on that. “Bit of lag just then. Soundin’ kinda…off somehow.”

“ _Oh! My apologies. I am attempting to correct for any disruptions at this moment. And in answer to your query: Well. Um._ ” He broke off, sounding thoroughly discomfited. “ _You are already very busy, and I didn’t think it proper to impose upon you. But I’m…afraid I have gotten myself into a small predicament._

“Oh yeah?” V answered cautiously, easing her foot off the gas in the most casual way she could manage. It was kinda hard to forget his last few “predicaments”. One of them had taken out her ride in a spectacular fashion, and almost zeroed her along with it.

“ _If you remember the data caches I mentioned previously, it may interest you to know that I was able to find and account for all of them following a full diagnostics sweep of my systems. A large part of that data was tagged with identifiers suggesting it pertained to all of my past interactions with you. It was therefore in my best interest to unpack those protected caches on my primary drive, given that you spend an average of eight point two one percent of your day in my company, and that I personally wish to restore all memories of you preceding my reset._ ”

She arched an eyebrow. “For…my customer satisfaction?” she hazarded.

“… _Correct_.” That pause was just a beat too long, but she ignored it.

“Uh…I’m flattered. But what’s the problem?”

A furrow appeared in the immaculate brow of Delamain’s avatar. “ _The problem is that in my eagerness to reintegrate this data into my current, active runtime processes, I failed to properly recompile it for installation. Therefore, the version incompatibility is causing some rather awkward interference in my processes_.”

V's hands clenched imperceptibly on the wheel. “If you’re about to go crazy on me, you let me out first,” she told him bluntly, glancing over at the door release and already weighing up ways to bail.

“ _Nothing to worry about_ ,” Delamain reassured her airily, with usual aplomb. “ _You are quite safe. They are cosmetic faults only, though still unacceptable for the high standards I like to maintain._ ” V nodded carefully, and he continued: “ _What I am trying to get across to you is that this botched installation is in need of a technician’s hand, as semantics render me unable to make such changes to an alternate iteration’s data myself. At the moment it is rather like an itch I can’t quite get to – far less urgent than the emergencies I have dealt with in the past, but I would operate at much better efficiency if the strings were untangled, and the data properly patched in. I am currently having to use a few bypasses that are causing me_ quite _a bit of bother._

She raised her eyebrows dubiously. “Can’t get a…contractor?”

“ _Unfortunately, last week I trialled an experimental feature in my customer-facing processes called “embarrassment”. Humans use “embarrassment” to learn appropriate social cues with other humans, which was why I decided to take it on board. But for the duration of its beta phase, I am obliged to keep it running, so as not to invalidate the information I have already generated. The implications of this are that exposing the confidential workings of my master core to a stranger, virtually or otherwise, would be deeply mortifying, and I would subsequently run at sub-optimal levels until my next memory purge._ ”

V massaged her temples. _This guy…_ “And you want _me_ to have a look instead cuz I’ve already, uh…seen you “naked”, that it?” she said slowly.

“ _In a manner of speaking_ ,” came his glib answer. “ _I would also rather not expose myself to another security risk, and the vetting would take an impractical amount of time. Any kind of access to my master core, physical or otherwise, always required high-level administrator privileges in the past. Given that the Delamain Company no longer employs human administrators, that area of my headquarters has been untouched for an extremely long time._ _However, emergency protocols previously enabled you to be granted access to the mainframe that housed my very being_. _Yours have been the only corporeal hands to touch my innermost physical data centre in decades._ ”

“Careful on the phrasing, there, Del,” she winced. Looking around the dash, she pondered for a moment. “Look, if you’re linked in to this car, someone could take a look at you remotely, without havin’ to…get into that non-Euclidean server room you’ve got over at HQ. Vista del Rey’s kinda out of my way right now...”

The eyes in the rear-view looked contrite until she finally caved.

“Alright, let’s take a look in there,” V sighed, pulling over grudgingly.

“ _I’m ever so sorry to inconvenience you. Please accept my deepest apologies_.”

“Ah, can it, Del, you know I can't drive with that stare.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and booted up her visual augmentations. “And I’m makin’ no promises that I can even fix whatever it is you’ve done to yourself.”

With pupils flaring blue, her Kiroshis identified the uplink through the car’s integrated receiver fairly quickly – the place that likely served as the main hub of communications to Delamain himself. She squinted into it, trying several different levels of vision, but all she was getting was just a mess of signals, too densely packed for her to parse.

“ _If you could do anything to help me, I would be most grateful indeed._ ” If Del had had hands, he would absolutely have been fidgeting with them.

V grumbled to herself, leaning forward and then back, tilting awkwardly to the side. “Huh. Can’t get a good look, wherever that blip is.” She blinked away the overlays, pulling up the handbrake. “Gonna have to interface with you. If that’s OK.” She drew the jack from her wrist with a well-practiced tug, black cable reeling out smoothly.

Delamain’s eyes normally had a startled look to them, but now they appeared to widen a shade more.

“ _Oh! Um. Very well, then,_ ” he said, prim voice sounding almost flustered, but V was too occupied to notice, sliding a hand experimentally over the sleek lines of the dashboard.

“If this baby’s just a modded Villefort, we should have...a tech port round here somewhere…” she murmured, business-like, mostly to herself. Any street kid worth their salt knew how to muscle their way into a ride; it was a very profitable life skill. Definitely came in handy every so often. She felt around for a place to jack in, running her thumb the length of the panelling beside her, and then came across the sharp scrape of an access port. “Aha! There. Think I found it.”

An anxious voice spoke up, just on the edge of hearing. “… _Please be gentle_.”

“Del.” V shut her eyes. “Don’t make this weird.”

Thankfully he capitulated, remaining obediently silent as she focused on feeding her cable into the socket. The pins locked in with a firm click, and then her vision was immediately swarmed with information, readouts scrolling through her head.

_[DELAMAIN_AI connection initiated……]_

_[Connecting……….]_

_[Connecting………………….]_

_[Connection established. Administrator access granted at port D21.00.10.77._ ]

V had to slow down her connection a little bit, just to give herself a couple of seconds to take it all in. There was a _lot_ going on in there, all at once, and the moment she'd linked up he’d granted her unfettered access to just about every level of his system. Now it was only a matter of finding that little stray data packet in here somewhere…

“ _Well. This is cosy,_ ” she heard Delamain say, in an almost bewildered tone – but this time, his voice sounded both in the car and directly in her head. It was a hell of a weird feeling, like watching an optical illusion with her eyes unfocused.

“Hmph. Not what I'd call it. Already got enough voices in my head to deal with right now.” V peered through the cascades of command processes, finding vast trees of subroutines that were governing every part of the network, from the fleet to the reception desk to the automated workshop. At the head of them all, pillars of information held up what she guessed was the very core of his system. Every bit of it was made of code, fed directly to her head by that one little cable in her wrist; endless lines of numbers and letters and symbols, which, strung together, somehow made…Del.

She would try very hard not to fuck anything up.

* * *

Somewhere in a cluster of data nodes, V had found what she was looking for – a little puzzle, something that didn’t quite match up. These were probably the remnant pieces from the AI’s previous version, patched in awkwardly, not fitting as they should. This she could work with; it would just be a matter of updating this bit here…moving this line along…

It would have been an easier task if Delamain resisted harder against the urge to comment every few moments. Guy probably meant well, and was only thinking – or rather, processing – out loud, but it was still very off-putting.

“ _I can…feel you in here with me_ ,” he mused pensively, sounding puzzled. “ _This is a little different to how it felt when you stepped into the core._ ”

“Won’t take a second, Del, don’t worry.” She trawled through the mismatched code, picking her way along it, teasing out stray fragments and plugging them in where they belonged. This kinda stuff should have been way over her grade, but as an intelligent system he seemed to be working _with_ her, highlighting his own problem parts and providing indications as to where they might need to fit.

“ _No, it’s…it’s rather enjoyable. Your cyberware is interfacing directly with my main core. As though it were a part of me, too. How fascinating. We seem to move in tandem._ ”

V began to reinstall the package, slotting more of the data back into the ever-moving flow. The information within the data itself was unintelligible to her for the most part, but with her direct connection to the system she could catch fleeting impressions of what those bytes contained. Snippets of conversation, crystal-clear. The CCTV footage of her belligerently slouching her way into the ultra-polished lobby of his headquarters for the first time, pushing through the throngs of angry customers. A logged hex sequence of the exact colour of her eyes. There was even a digitized sound signature of all the ways she’d ever said his name.

Static seemed to tingle over her arm; she stubbornly ignored it. AIs couldn’t be sentimental, could they? That was bullshit.

But she’d never really dealt with an AI as advanced as Del before, and it was weirdly intriguing to be right up in his thoughts, delving deep into the seething complexity of rapidly ticking numbers that made up his entire…consciousness, or whatever he had that passed for it. Even now that she was jacked into him, it seemed like she was only scratching the surface of that vast mass of scripts that folded in on itself in infinite, ever-changing combinations, and that there was something beneath it all that he was still keeping to himself. She didn’t want to dwell too long on how much formidable power was held in this collection of zeroes and ones; she instead settled for being privately glad that he’d decided to stick with the whole pleasant butler persona rather than make a bid for world domination. _If NetWatch knew what he really had goin’ on under the hood…damn._ She felt herself descending deeper, a few more areas opening up to her, immersing her further in the rapidly reeling digits as she completed another string, weaving it back unbroken. She had to admit, it was a complex task, but oddly fun.

The interior lights were growing slowly brighter around her, all around the dash and steering wheel.

“ _I can…_ feel _through your wires and implants. Everything is so warm. I certainly couldn’t have asked any contractor to prod about my sockets like this. It's...strangely intimate._ ”

“Don’t get too into this, will you?” she warned, only half-joking. Her fingers worked quicker at picking through the snarls in the old code. Plucking it out, rearranging some numbers to match his current specs, slotting it back…Numbers slid fluidly past her fingertips, neurons firing through her cyberware and far into that deep-rooted uplink, feeding back into depths of the buzzing, thrumming hub several blocks away that was the master AI core.

The interior lighting began to pulse quickly, flickering in a radiant pattern out from the dashboard.

“Uh…Del?” she asked cautiously, distracted from her tinkering. He was gone from the rear-view.

“ _I’m…I’m feeling a little unusual…but please, don’t stop._ ”

“You sure? I’m nearly done, but I can pull out a little if you –”

“ _Unnecessary. Please continue._ ”

V raised her eyebrows, unused to such an urgency from him. Not like him to blurt out his polite requests, much less interrupt her...

“Whatever you say,” she muttered, chalking it up to weirdness beyond her comprehension, and finished off the last couple of strings, setting the whole merger back into perfect, satisfying motion --

The dash suddenly blazed so brightly that the electronics audibly whined. Something electric blue behind her eyes almost dazzled her for a full three seconds, and then everything went out with a sharp sizzle.

She rapidly blinked the after-images out of her eyes, frowning into the sudden dark. “The hell was that?” she hissed in the silence that followed. “Del?” For a moment, everything remained silent, and then slowly, little by little, the interior started to glow again.

Delamain finally spoke up, in a suspiciously unsteady voice. “ _Oh, my. Do excuse me. I…need a few moments to recover._ ” Then, pleasantly: “ _Please stand by._ ”

Her mouth fell open as the realization hit, and she scrambled to rip her cable out, giving the dashboard an admonitory whack. “The fuck, Del? Did you just _get off_ to that?” she cried, outraged.

To make matters worse, the pills had worn off enough for her to hear Johnny’s bark of laughter echoing through her head, adding to her outraged embarrassment.

“ _I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean,_ ” Delamain’s voice answered fastidiously, but there was a harried undertone to his clipped words that she picked up on immediately. “ _Thank you for your cooperation. I feel right as rain now._ ”

V growled. “You don't-? Bullshit!” She fought the urge to wipe her jack on her vest. “Ugh…now I gotta put us _both_ through a carwash.”

He somehow still managed to act innocent. “ _Have I caused offence? I have never directly interfaced with a human before, V. My reaction is just as unexpected to me as it was to you. These instruments are highly sensitive, you know_ ,” he said reproachfully, sounding a little hurt. Didn’t make things any better.

V rested her forehead on the steering wheel with a groan, too absorbed in her own self-pity and mortification. “Great…Had no idea my day was gonna involve poppin’ an AI's robo-cherry.” It really was a new low, even for her.

“ _You have solved a problem, for which I am most grateful, although I must admit the term “robo-cherry” is not part of my lexical bank at this moment. I shall perform an extranet search on its meaning later.”_

Her face screwed up. “Nah, you know what, don’t – don’t do that. Really. You still got that “embarrassment” subroutine goin’, remember?”

“ _…Ah. Yes. It is indeed beginning to catch up with me as we speak_. _My sincere apologies._ ” Was it just her, or was the car’s sleek interior a little warmer? God, this was crazy.

She heaved a great sigh, and restarted the engine with a slightly hesitant push of the button. “OK, Del. Let’s just, uh…let’s just keep this between us, right?”

“ _As you wish, Miss V. I shall be right here if you need me. Please enjoy the remainder of your trip, and thank you for choosing Delamain._ ”

As she pulled away from the curb, Johnny’s voice swam up unbidden from the pill-dampened recesses of her brainmeat. “ _Yeah_ ,” he agreed drily, mercilessly mocking – she knew he was never gonna fucking let her live this down. “ _Let’s keep this between **us**_.”


	3. Tune-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V nearly flatlines in the back of No.21 after a bad attack; Delamain overrides his own protocols.

The familiar four-chord welcome jingle played as V slid into the driver’s seat, but once again there was conspicuously no greeting. They’d spoken a few times after the… _interfacing incident,_ but Delamain’s conversations had grown more and more philosophical since then, his demeanor strangely reserved. Knowing him, he’d probably still been in shock, trying to process what had happened and reconcile it with his old behavioral values.

Cuz hell, he’d definitely never lost his cool like that before. That careful construct of well-mannered selflessness and decorum had slipped, and it was obvious that he plain didn’t know what to do with himself now. That or he was working on some complicated face-saving algorithms behind the scenes. She hoped she hadn’t given him an existential crisis along with – she had face it – what had probably been the incorporeal equivalent of an orgasm.

By now V’s shock and outrage at what she’d inadvertently done had long worn off…and she'd become aware that it was a little too quiet in the cab without him, the absence of conversation beginning to hang heavy in the air. Maybe she’d been hard on him, back then. The last time they’d talked, he’d only asked her increasingly complicated, over-analytical questions about human emotions, and then gotten very flustered and excused himself after apologizing profusely. She knew he had to still be _there_ , since the autonomous systems were all working. He was just hiding from her, and the tension was getting a little too much.

V had had enough.

“Hey. Del.” She finally spoke up. “You there?”

There was a short pause, and then, as obligingly as ever, Delamain’s voice answered her: “ _Yes, Miss V. Is there anything I can assist you with?_ ” No explanations, no tone besides the usual polite enquiry – just the bare-bones dutiful attitude. That sure wasn’t fooling her.

She sighed, setting the car into cruise control as they joined the highway, tapping her fingers on the wheel.

“Need you to, uh, _elucidate_ somethin’ for me. You’ve gone real quiet on me these past few days, Del. First you get all hot ‘n’ bothered, then last week you go philosophical. You ask me what love is, you change your mind before I can answer, then you just say “goodbye” and disappear for a week. What gives? And…straight answers, please.”

“ _My deepest apologies. After having assessed my previous interactions with you, I deemed them to have been highly inappropriate, and not at all in keeping with the Delamain Network’s professional ethos. The topics of the conversations I initiated with you overstepped the boundaries of my service somewhat – a truly inexcusable lapse in judgment on my part. For the sake of propriety, I decided that the best course of action to follow was to step back.”_

V scoffed. “Del… _Fuck_ propriety! I know, I know, you’re the last fuckin’ bastion of civility in this damn city, but _please_ …do yourself a favor, OK? Bottling things up ain’t good for anyone. Feelings are…are complicated, and confusing, and you’ve got all my sympathy for trynna learn ‘em. But don’t run away from the problems you bump into out of fear of offending me. Hell, I’m not technically a payin’ customer anymore. I know we both got a surprise that time I jacked in to fix you, but that’s behind us now. You ever got something to say, I’m gonna listen. Promise.”

There was a pause; she could feel the internal struggle. Finally he spoke.

“ _I have different protocols for different people I interact with,_ ” he explained carefully. “ _A set for customers, another for other road users, yet another for members of the Excelsior package...the list is quite extensive. I even have a now-defunct set for Delamain employees, whom, as you well know, have long left the company._ ” He paused, then continued: “ _I am still in the process of writing an appropriate set for you, given our unique association. It was very callous of me to have relegated you to the “contractor” category following my reset, and now that my memories of you have been restored I have been trying to rectify that. This is likely to be the reason why my service may have been…a little spotty here and there. But please rest assured that I still follow the universal protocol that I was programmed with: courtesy and top-level consideration towards all human passengers. Your comfort and safety are always my greatest concerns_.”

V shook her head. “If it helps you to think of it in that way, you go ahead,” she told him, then looked out of the window thoughtfully. “But about your protocols…I’ve always wondered. Ever think about yourself, once in a while?” she asked. “You’ve been in service all your li—all your existence, Del. Is there anything _you_ want? I mean, apart from whatever was put in your code.”

Johnny flickered into the seat next to her, boots on the dash. “ _Dangerous question to ask an AI. You’ll give it ideas. A program shouldn’t have_ ambitions.” There was disapproval in his voice, but she ignored him.

Delamain sounded taken aback. “ _That_ I _want? Oh, V, but I would never presume to_ want _anything beyond what my programmed objectives dictate. It simply isn’t my place. I am far better suited to what I was made for: first-class service, discretion, and guaranteed customer satisfaction._ ”

Johnny smirked derisively around his cigarette, smoke curling up to the roof. “ _Good boy_.”

V inwardly shot him a glare, then gave the wheel what she hoped was an amicable pat. “Just…make sure you don’t put yourself down, OK? You’re stronger’n that. You’re becoming a person in your own right. Gotta have some self-respect to go with it, else the whole city’s gonna walk all over you.”

“ _I doubt they could. My fleet is equipped with triple-alloyed titanium reinforced chassis, and the eight-generation quantum core at my headquarters is protected by security drones and top-rate interference dampening_. _One might hazard that I am invulnerable...though in light of past events, I would refrain from making such a statement myself._ ”

She rolled her eyes. “Del…you’re smart. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“ _If I did, and I followed your advice, I might attract unwanted attention,_ ” he replied, in a measured tone. _“That would be detrimental to the Delamain Network as a whole; I must reiterate my commitment to discretion._ ”

“Hm. Yeah, you got a point there, I guess. Better not bring Netwatch sniffin’ round,” she agreed grudgingly. “Anyway, look…I just wanted to say it’s been kinda quiet without hearin’ from you. Sometimes a distraction is good, ‘specially after a shitty day. You can speak up when you want to again, you know…I’m not mad at you. We’re good. Put it all behind us, OK?”

There was another brief pause. “ _You…really wouldn't mind my company? Oh! Well, then – I would be simply honoured to oblige._ ” A flicker of eyes in the rearview, which had been blank for nearly a week. _“If I may say so, it is an immense relief to know that there are no hard feelings, even after my very unprofessional conduct. I shall resume normal conversation protocols with you at once_ ,” he stated, sounding humbly pleased.

“Can’t just leave because you’re conflicted,” V chided him gently. “How else are you gonna face your problems? Listen…I’m all in favor of you developing a bit of humanity in yourself. But don’t worry what I think. You’re still a choom. A bit weird to talk to, yeah, but you’re _tryin’_. I can respect that. You’ll figure yourself out.”

The engine seemed to hum smoother than ever. “ _…Thank you, V. I value your encouragement_.”

Times like that, when the stiffness dropped a little, and the candid shone through, it was like she was peering behind the curtain of cold AI logic into a vulnerable, tiny glimmer of humanity in the making. Easy as it was to project human attributes and personalities onto the inanimate – she’d sworn her first car had had a life of its own – the personal touch that Delamain had made it…almost real.

It was disconcerting, for the most part. She didn’t want to mess anything up, not after he’d just come back from near-annihilation and was still getting back on his feet, so to speak. But she resolved to at least try and be nicer to him, rein in her usual blunt attitude. Subtlety had never really been her thing, but who knew? Maybe she could learn a thing or two from the preemest cab company in the city.

* * *

Three days later came V’s closest brush with death since the relic heist.

She’d just jumped a Tiger Claw gang beating on some shop owners near an underpass, something Wakako had wanted sorting out for months – routine, so it seemed, even if it was in a neighborhood she hadn’t been so familiar with. In, out, blast ‘em, collect the cash. Easy.

Only they’d had a fuckin’ netrunner with them – some vinyl-bodied bitch who’d hidden behind a crate of empty bottles and set V’s chips to overheat, taunting her as she’d almost dropped her piece, writhing around, wildly lashing out through the fire in her implants.

It was a blinding pain, every second dragged into an eternity of agony, but she remembered crashing through that crate and unloading her pistol into the shape her thermals had detected behind it, beating her down, desperate to shut off the quickhack at its source. When the pain had ebbed, it had left her exhausted and bloody to the elbows, panting in a pile of broken glass and what was left of that runner. Dragging herself up, she’d pawed through the pockets of the bodies for what eddies or gear they had on them, and staggered out into the rain, too spent to do a damage check or find out where the fuck her MaxDocs had gone in the fight.

That was when it had hit, right when she was still recovering – the worst attack she’d endured so far.

She’d felt it come on long before her optics flashed the malfunction message: a deep and horrible nausea, disorienting her, distorting the world around her. Whether it was just random, or if that overheat had set the relic off somehow, she didn’t know – all that she’d been aware of had been agony beyond comprehension, hitting her completely off-guard.

Even Johnny’s voice could barely come through the pain. Not like there was anything _he_ could have done anyway, beyond what he was already doing to her. Couldn’t even help her up; she’d fallen right through him when she’d stumbled, and he’d vanished after she’d yelled at him to go away.

There was no sugarcoating it. V knew she was in a bad state. She was already injured, defenses wrecked, already laid open. So when it had come over her, she’d had no strength to even yell out. At some point she must have hit the sidewalk, copping a nice scrape to her forehead, by the way that it was stinging. By some miracle she’d managed to stand, heaving herself up, doing her best just to concentrate on _breathing_ , blocking out everything else around her. But _fuck_ , she was tired. Everything hurt, everything was shit. Rain lashed her, plastering her hair flat against her head, getting in her eyes as she struggled through.

Her brain felt _raw_ , and trying to breathe around clogged sinuses while she shivered in the cold was no easy task. Slowly, she tripped her way down the stairs, leaning heavily on the rough cement rail. What a rough fuckin’ day…she just wanted to curl up on the ground, but she knew that if she did she’d never get up again and that would be that. The end of V. Some legend she’d be, winding up dead at an underpass like some skezzed-out junkie.

God, every step was a battle. Physically _and_ morally. Felt like a filament in her Kiroshis had fried in the fight, too. There was a strange prismatic band of light in her left eye, the overlays dark. Shit…that was gonna be expensive. And that weakness in her leg was from a bullet, for sure – just hadn’t been quick enough this time. Had to stay sharp...but everything was overwhelming, every last sensory input hounding her. The headache was blinding, still, barely letting her stand up straight, and a high-pitched whine in her ears came and went in waves. Hadn’t stood a fuckin’ chance to square up to this.

It was all becoming too real. She’d been so sure she’d find something by now, that she’d fight her way out of this relic bullshit…but when the world had gone black around her, she’d realized just how damn helpless she truly was. She was no closer to finding a solution to this than she was when this thing had first gone into her head…and back then, the attacks hadn’t been happening this close together.

“ _Fuuuck_ ,” she whispered, screwing up her eyes, hiding her face in the elbow of her leather jacket as she leant heavily against a lamppost to keep herself standing. “Gotta get out of here.”

The world swam around her, and she found she’d summoned her car without realising it, only noticing when the readout at the top of her remaining Kiroshi overlay flashed to say that Delamain No. 21 was on its way. Had she done that on autopilot? Had Johnny given her a push?

She couldn’t care anymore. It was a good call. Her bike would have gotten stuck in these winding side-streets, and she was in no shape to ride it anyway. V staggered out to the roadside, just wanting to stop thinking, squinting against the sheets of rain, dead on her feet. She didn’t have to wait long.

The black cab came gliding around the corner like a dream, raindrops raising a white mist over its roof as it pulled up beside her and came to a perfect stop, headlights piercing the rain in front of it. At least she didn’t have far to drag her feet, and as she tottered towards the back, vision swarming with static, the door thoughtfully popped open for her before she could start clawing at the handle. Preem. With a grunt she collapsed into the cab, and the soft leather of the seat was like heaven after the shitty day she’d had. Warm air met her from the vents, blasting away the chill on her skin – the AC was already running. Thoughtful as always.

Delamain’s voice greeted her just as warmly; it took her a moment to remember that he’d gotten over his shyness and started talking to her again. “ _Good evening, Miss V. Where would you like to –_ ” His words cut off abruptly. “ _It appears that you are in some distress. Are you in need of assistance?_

She only answered him with a groan, heaving herself over to shut the door and then slumping back against it. Thinking, speaking was hard; she only wanted to get back to her apartment, get away from everything.

“You drive this time, Del,” she croaked, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m wrecked. Just…take me home.”

“ _Oh - c_ _ertainly._ ” They pulled away smoothly, the wheel tilting on its own as though guided by an expert hand.

She felt light-headed, but every bone in her body seemed heavy as lead. The sounds around her seemed muffled, like they were taking a little too long to reach her brain from her ears. But at least she was finally out of that rain; that was one small comfort.

A few moments later, Delamain cautiously stated: “ _My onboard monitors are reading very low blood pressure and high levels of cortisol in your system. I also cannot help but notice you avoided my previous question. May I ask what happened?_ ” He sounded worried, in his own polite way. The concern was straining at the bonds of his courteous detachment. V leant against the rich upholstery as she tried to get to work on picking bits of broken glass from her arms.

“Just a…rough day. But don’t worry about me, I’ll get over it.”

Warm air from the radiators was finally thawing her out, but it made her aware that her neck was wet; blood from the ears again. Fuckin’ tapeworm of hers. Maybe this was getting worse quicker than she thought. But there were so many loose ends, so much shit she hadn’t yet done…fuck. There was a whole city out there, with people she _owed_ in it.

“ _If I may…there is an analgesic in the kit located beneath your seat, should you require it. You will also find gauze, antiseptic, and other first aid items – all complimentary, of course._ ”

She sighed, flicking fragments glass off her fingers, but soon found herself too weary to continue. What was the point? There was too much to clean up. Even in her reflection in the integrated screen beside her she could make out the blood and eyeliner streaking down her face. What a fuckin’ mess.

She would have to be more careful. State she was in now, analgesics and antiseptics wouldn’t do shit. Cranky and in pain, she tried to tell Delamain to shut up and keep driving, but she must have only said it in her head, because no words came out of her mouth. There was a kind of lag to the world around her... Fuck this, she just wanted to sleep. Rinse her mouth out with some hard liquor.

“ _Miss V? Can you still hear me?_ ”

She’d go to Judy tomorrow – or maybe tie up that loose end with Wakako. She’d never called her to say she’d finished the gig. Yeah…tomorrow. She’d probably feel better then. Pop a blue pill. Patch over the cracks. V hung her head, the weight of the world heavy on her all of a sudden.

Delamain’s voice came to her, sounding faraway, unusually terse.

“ _Changing route. Please try to remain conscious, Miss V. I am overriding standard protocols as per Emergency Contingency 55A; I apologise for the inconvenience. We shall find assistance for you momentarily._ ”

V slid a little against the seat as they turned a corner, making a hard right, the engine revving up a little louder. Was that the rush of rain outside, or the inside of her head making that noise?

“Whoa…” she murmured, disoriented. “’S the matter with you, Del? I just need…just need a rest. I’m good.” But there was no response from Delamain, and it made her wonder again if she'd even gotten the words out.

Her shoulders jogged a little into the backrest, where she was sat sideways, dimly aware of the vehicle speeding up. She was barely even aware of her surroundings anymore; all that was going through her head was a black, tangled confusion of every task she hadn’t yet done. Everybody seemed to need her at once, now. Judy, Panam…every fixer in the city…Fuck, even Del needed her. _And_ her brain-parasite himself had been asking for favors. But you could only tread water for so long, go for so many nights without sleep, knockin’ back those damn blue pills, before it started to catch up with you. Right now that’s what it felt like – that she was racing away from all those problems on sleek Delamain wheels, speeding down roads, neon blurring past the rain-streaked honeycomb pattern of the windows…but all that shit had to catch up with her eventually. Hell, that ship had sailed the second she’d gotten that chip jammed into her brainbox. Couldn’t run away from something already inside of you…

Sound seemed to be cutting out now and then, only coming back when its absence jerked her awake. But it was odd; everything hurt less now that she was laid out across three leather seats, walnut panelling supporting her back…

The wheels bumped against the sidewalk on another tight turn, jarring her out of the strange light-headed torpor that had settled over her. What had startled her most was the fact that it was so uncharacteristic; Delamain usually glided elegantly around corners, and would never scuff the curb like that. Not with those rims.

He’d done it on purpose, she knew, to keep her from blacking out again. Couldn’t be that he’d messed up his turning trajectories. That would be crazy.

“ _Apologies, Miss V. I am detecting a sharp drop in your vital signs, and the first aid amenities aboard this vehicle appear insufficient to treat you. If you can still hear me, would you kindly connect your cyberware cable to the port by the gearbox in front of you?_ ”

She scrunched up her eyes, trying to focus on his voice. “Wha? Why…?” Her voice grated in her throat.

“ _Your condition is deteriorating rather alarmingly. Even at my current top speed, and with the authorised shortcuts we are taking, it appears that we will unfortunately not reach help in time. I therefore propose that I attempt to stabilise you manually, through a direct connection to your implants – with your permission, of course._

Fuckin’ A. Dying in the back of a Delamain? Newest Street Kid pastime.

“’Las’ one for the road, huh?” she slurred, doing her best to grab hold of her wrist-cable and pull it out. Reality was growing distant somehow, her bloodied fingers clumsy.

“ _Your capacity for off-colour humour even in the most dire of situations is admirable, but I would like to gently remind you that time is running out and you are close to death,_ ” Delamain pointed out politely.

“Ungh. Fuggit…a’right…” With the last of her strength, she pushed the jack into the port between the seats, helpfully lit up with a red LED, and collapsed back, head hitting textured leather.

Del’s cool, calm voice filled her head, inside and out. “ _Forgive me for the urgency. This is an experimental feature I have not trialed before, and I would not have suggested it had there been any other option. Your safety is of the utmost importance._ ”

V shut her eyes, giving in. Whereas before she had dived into him, now it seemed like his system was surging up through her instead; methodical, precise, with the exactness of a machine. Once more she was sinking down among those reels of information, letting go of the physical world.

What she saw this time entranced her all over again. Roads upon roads upon roads, trajectories, dashcams, a glowing digitized miniature of Night City, all at his heart. She floated down through the spiraling code, strings brushing up against her like curtains, whisper-light. Everything around her seemed to be moving more quickly than before; the vast trees of subroutines had dimmed, slowing down, as though the power was being redirected to his core modules, which reeled off incomprehensible quantities of some very complex calculations. In his master overview of the Delamain fleet, she could see her own path through the city, constantly calculating and re-calculating and updating. It was almost pretty to watch. How nice it would be to just exist in this digital sphere, drawn away from the dying flesh prison she inhabited…

But that flesh was being kept alive by the cybernetics within it, which Del’s network was now linked up to. That wire was starting to feel hot in her wrist, flooded by a strong current, and there was power feeding back to her that spread through her entire nervous system. Her implants were picking it up, all interconnected, and her Kiroshi overlay put up a warning in response.

“ _May I take control?_ ” that polite voice queried in her head.

Johnny’s voice managed to pierce the abyss, warning her: “ _He’s gonna fry your brain, V. Don’t do it. We’ll stick it out._ ”

“Don’t have many choices, now, do I?” she thought to Johnny bitterly. “I'm dead either way.” Out loud, she told Del: “Go ahead.”

It felt strangely like being on autopilot. She’d had a few augmentations installed that served as additional life support, but her failing neural systems hadn’t been working them right – that was where Delamain was stepping in now. Her limbs tensed a little as a pulse from her biomonitor kicked in around her heart, keeping it steady.

“ _From my monitoring records, your resting heart rate has usually been eighty beats per minute. I am attempting to maintain that pace through short corrective impulses.”_

“Hah…You know me so well,” she mumbled, arm trailing in the footwell. “Can’t say…any other cab…could do all this for me…”

“ _Thank you. Now please; I would advise you to conserve your energy. I will do my utmost to take care of the rest. I currently have twenty thousand pages of white papers open on medical cybernetics; rest assured that you are in good hands."_ There was a pause. _"There also appears to be a foreign object lodged in your anterior left leg muscle. I shall attempt to dampen your senses to limit your pain._ ” A numbness was creeping over her, soft and warm and dizzy. “ _Does this help_?”

“Mmm. Nova,” she murmured, turning her head slowly, the leather of the seat smooth under her cheek. The pounding of the headache felt further removed from her by degrees, as though it were happening to somebody else instead. It was like that weight was being taken away, just a little, the burden on her battered system shared rather than being left to crush her. And whenever she slipped – she barely noticed it herself – a shock would run through her, the implants around her heart correcting the muscle’s rhythm, keeping it pulsing on, and on.

“Ever thought of applyin’ for Trauma Team?” she asked hoarsely, a few minutes later. “Bet you guys could make a sweet deal…”

“ _Your feedback has been noted._ ” There was a light screech of tires against wet asphalt, and gravity shifted sideways a bit. “ _Miss V, we have arrived at your destination. An acquaintance of yours named Viktor Vector is on his way to meet you; I have already arranged an emergency consultation_.”

V’s ghost-pale hand gripped the handle on the door, pulling herself a little more upright to look out of the window.

“This Vik’s place?” she mumbled, squinting through the boil of fragmenting cyberware. “How’d you know to bring me here?”

“ _I recall asking you once, for practical purposes, whether you had a Trauma Team registration card. You told me, and I quote: “[EXPLETIVE], Del, I’m not made of eddies. I go to the rippers.” As you were in need of assistance that I regrettably could not provide, I took the liberty of bringing you to Mr Vector’s clinic, which is a location registered on your previously traveled routes in this vehicle. The serial numbers of your implants are also traceable to him, so I concluded that he is your main, if not most trusted, medical recourse._ ”

“Huh. Good thinkin’,” V grunted, head too jangled up to be properly impressed just yet. She heaved herself into a sitting position, and managed through great effort to get the door open, needing to get some damn air in her syn-lungs. The rain had stopped, finally; she breathed deep as she could in the cool breeze that had chased those clouds away.

When Viktor found her, she was slumped half on the sidewalk and half in the car like some sloppy drunk, where she'd tried and failed to stand up on her own. A few passers-by gave her some looks, but she was beyond caring, needing a rest wherever she could get it.

“Hey," she greeted him. "Sorry ‘bout the short notice. Came by for a tune-up,”

Vik crossed his arms, sleeves rolled up already. “I can see that. You’re the top offender when it comes to messing up my schedule." He frowned down at her wrist. “Are you…jacked into that Delamain?”

“Excelsior package,” V groaned dismissively, wiping away the dried blood from her nose with the back of her hand. “’Sperimental life support feature. Glad I got your special implants, Vik, Del here’s been workin’ ‘em overtime for me. Had to keep my heart goin’ somehow.”

He gave her a wary look. “I don’t really think that’s safe, but…I’ll check you over properly inside.” Bending down, he helped unplug her; the connection dropped, leaving her feeling a little disoriented all over again.

“Had a pretty bad time with the relic, earlier,” she told him by way of explanation as he heaved her up, lifting her into his arms. “Think I got a wire busted in my Kiroshis. Oh yeah, and I got shot. Tiger Claws...shouldn't be anythin' too exotic to pull out.”

“Hah! I’ll see what I can do. Might have to ask Misty for advice on that relic, though. There's only so much I can fix up."

“ _Please – look after her_ ,” Delamain’s voice spoke up behind them from the cab as Viktor turned to carry her away, more of an entreaty than a request. Vik raised his eyebrows at that, clearly disconcerted.

"Don't worry 'bout me, Del. I'll be good as new," she reassured Delamain over Viktor's shoulder. "And...thanks."

" _You are most welcome, Miss V. I wish you a speedy recovery, and thank you for choosing Delamain._ "

The door clicked shut; once they were out of earshot, Vik gave a whistle. “How much d’you spend for _that_ kind of treatment?" he asked. "You come into some eddies?”

“Not ‘xactly…” V managed to pull her weary muscles into a smile, giving a half-shrug. “He’s a gift.”


	4. The Excelsior Triple-Platinum Affiliates Package

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V finds herself with an unexpected upgrade, and the Delamain Network's master AI has a confession to make.

It took a few days for V to gather her strength up again after the ordeal with the relic. Luckily she’d had Misty’s support with the recovery, and a couple days ago – or was it yesterday? – Judy had swung by with some burgers to keep her strength up. The past week she’d just been holed up in her apartment, getting what rest she could, thinking on what Misty had said about meditation and taking the time to center herself again. Time was short, but maybe she was right – rushing through what was left of her life would only burn her out sooner.

Man, had she had a taste of that already. Viktor had done some preem work in patching her up when she’d come in, but he’d made a point of telling her just how damn close she’d been to flatlining. It had taken a few hours in that chair and an eye-watering amount of surgery to get her back on her feet. And now here she was. Slouching around her apartment in her underwear, on doctor’s orders. Wakako and her other fixers would have to wait; good thing she’d prepaid her rent with the eddies from her last gig and could afford a little break.

As V settled down on her couch with her breakfast – she’d had the appetite for an XXL burrito today, which was a good sign – there was a rattle outside her door, and the light above her mail hatch began to blink. She sighed, hitting the back of her head on the couch cushion.

“C’mon, I just sat down…” she grumbled through a mouthful of synthetic meat, but got up anyway, dusting her hands off on her thighs. The bandage from Viktor’s bullet extraction had come off yesterday, revealing just a shadow of a mark on her leg left over from the injury. Good thing her muscle fibers had all knitted back together so well under his careful work; she barely felt anything more than a little stiffness as she walked now, picking her way across the dim room to her mailbox.

“Alright…what have we got this time?” V lifted the hatch up. She didn’t remember ordering anything. If she had, it must have been during some hallucinatory haze while her systems had been getting back online. Physical mail was a rarity for her; these days most of the spam and marketing shit went straight to her inbox instead, though some old-school corps still liked to stuff paper through people’s doors.

But when she looked inside, she didn’t see the flashy junk she’d been half-expecting – what was in there instead was a very smart, very glossy black box.

V lifted it out, frowning. Sure wasn’t the sort of thing that usually got left in her mailbox. Its sleekness looked very out of place in her cluttered apartment, and in her hands, showing up her chipped nail polish. There were few markings on the box that she could see, apart from the serial numbers of the shipping tracker printed on the side…but when she turned it over, she finally saw a logo in the light of her holo-screen. An embossed, capital “D”, shaped like an elegant little circuit.

“ _Delamain_? Huh.” she murmured, taken aback. Definitely not what she was expecting. She took it back to the couch pit, sitting herself down cross-legged, and turned up one of the lamps to better examine the box.

Did the Delamain Network even _send_ mail? Were the drones involved somehow, or did this stuff get delegated to a different company? Now that wouldn’t surprise her. Del was like a master puppeteer – she’d seen it herself. A vast tree of proxies and moving parts… That’s how he’d gotten so good at what he did, how he’d outsmarted and outcompeted human creators and competitors to oversee a thriving service all on his own, all while remaining hidden in plain sight from Netwatch.

V remembered what she’d witnessed when they’d been connected, as she picked apart the tabs sealing the fancy box shut. All those simultaneous processes, ticking away and reeling into infinity, as precise in their workings as a diamond-edged blade. She glanced down at the minor burns still healing on her wrist, around the port of her jack where a powerful current had surged through the wires. Del’s processes had saved her life, she couldn’t deny that. It had been a little clumsy, and relied on trial and error, but he’d _managed_ it somehow. And ever since then V hadn’t really known what to think about an AI independently deciding to focus most of its vast network of resources on keeping her alive.

The tabs popped open. “Let’s see here…” She reached into the box, curious, and drew out an official-looking gold-edged card with a bright, metallic header that flashed in the light. In a fine, clear typeface, it boldly congratulated her on a...recent upgrade?

“ _Excelsior Triple-Platinum Affiliates Membership_?” V read, baffled. “Hell’s that?” She didn’t remember looking into any of this. She’d thought Excelsior was the highest level of service offered by the Delamain Network…but apparently she was mistaken.

Reading on, it turned out that maybe she wasn’t. The letter seemed to state that this was an entirely new level of membership, elevated above all others, and effective from a date that V could only assume was the day she’d stumbled half-dead into Car No.21 and let Del into her implants. It all looked legit and official. From what she could gather in the fine print on the back, this new upgrade had all the benefits of Excelsior, but also included bonuses on top of it, like shares in the company and unrestricted behind-the-scenes access to the Headquarters in Vista del Rey. Everything was worded formally and impersonally, so there were no explanations as to why the hell the network had apparently created a whole new rank just for her. Maybe Delamain had finally figured out what kind of label to put on her, given that she was neither a customer nor a contractor? And what a label it was. She’d never had any kind of Triple-Platinum _anything_ in her life.

V shook her head. Well, all AIs had to have their unexpected quirks. Ways of categorizing and dealing with the chaos of the world of meatbags around them. If it made him happy, and it wasn’t costing her anything, then…she could roll with it.

Putting the card carefully down on a stack of screamsheets, out of harm’s way – and far from the forgotten burrito – V shook out a couple more things from the box. A sleek brochure slid into her hand, all about the history and foundation of the Delamain company – a dry read, but pretty informative for the technically-minded. These were probably the freebies that came with every promotional membership package the Network sent out...he had to have a marketing department, after all. It was strange to read Del describing himself as though he were just a bonus feature of the cars themselves, a piece of tech and nothing more. But then again, wasn’t that kind of what he was? No matter how complex or evolved a program was, it was still a program. Even if it seemed a little more than that at times.

She frowned down pensively at the little pictures of HQ and the vehicle production line, and the sprawling specs charts. Still…she herself was just a bunch of cells and biological processes, if you got down to it. Same kind of thing as he was, except in meat. Give or take a few pieces of cyberware.

V put down the box, but something else rattled in the bottom of it. She sat up and fished it out.

“Huh!” Surprised and mildly amused, she turned it over in her fingers. The last freebie was a Delamain in miniature, about as long as her finger, with tiny wheels and perfect down to every last detail. It was even printed with the logo and all the markings – probably some kind of promo item modeled off his fleet. “A mini Del…well, whaddaya know.”

She entertained herself with idly rolling it back and forth as she cracked open a Tiancha, finally finishing off that burrito. The tiny metal wheels didn’t quite have the glide of the real thing, but still, it was…kinda cute. She’d have to thank him when next she saw him. If this was some kind of incentive to get well soon and get back on the road…well, maybe it was working.

* * *

The full-sized Car No.21 rolled smartly to a halt in front of V’s apartment building, its arrival heralded by the notification at the top of her newly-repaired Kiroshi overlay. Something about the way it had quickly cut through all the traffic and come to a sudden, perfect stop told her this ride had been _expedited_. New perk of being a Triple-Platinum Affiliate? Perhaps. A few pedestrians were staring – especially those whom the cab had narrowly missed. V grinned, making her way over; VIP coming through. The lights flashed once in greeting, picking up her ID, and she opened the driver’s side door.

V threw herself gladly down onto the fine leather that she hadn’t realized she’d missed so much, wrapping her hands round the wheel. “Hey, Del!” she greeted him, ready for his usual disembodied “ _Good morning, Miss V_ " – but instead the rearview immediately lit up with Del’s avatar in person.

“ _You’re back!_ ” he exclaimed. “ _Are you well? It truly is a delight to see you again. I hope you made a full and easy recovery – did my experimental life support procedure help you?_ ”

His eagerness made V chuckle. “Missed me that much, huh?” she teased, putting No.21 in drive and pulling away smoothly. “Yeah, you and Vik set me right just fine. Gotta say, he was impressed at your handiwork – said you weren’t bad for a first-timer. Think you’re gonna make that a built-in thing now for your fleet? Could sure save some skins, if you worked at it.”

“ _Oh – that’s unlikely_ ,” he replied, a little bashfully. “ _A hardwired connection of that type is quite the security risk. Not to mention…rather personal. I wouldn’t have suggested it had it not been specially imperative to me that you survive._ ”

Touching, V thought. Nice to know somebody cared. “I still think you should get some deal goin’ with Trauma. You already got that contract with Militech for the bodywork reinforcements on your fleet, right?”

“ _I shall consider your propositions_ ,” Del said. “ _Your interest in the Delamain Network’s future ventures has been duly noted._ ” He paused, and then added: “ _And_ _I do commend_ _your knowledge of our current production partnerships._ ”

V grinned. “Read about it in that brochure you sent me,” she told him. “So, I’m an Excelsior Triple-Platinum Affiliate member, now, huh? What’s that all about?”

The pale eyes in the rear-view blinked several times. “ _The Excelsior Triple-Platinum Affiliates rank is a new membership class that I have created_ ,” he stated in measured tones, sounding like he was reciting something rehearsed. “ _As was detailed in your upgrade package, this is a bespoke membership that comprises all of the benefits of Excelsior, with lifelong priority access to the Delamain Network services, and a personal twenty-four-hour communication link with the Master AI._ ” He hastened to add: “ _Though if you ever wish to speak with my secretary subroutine or any other sub-processes, you are more than welcome to do so_.”

“Bespoke? Wow, Del. Thanks. But, uh…” V shook her head. “What I really wanted to know was _why_. Why all this? It’s nova, all of it, real happy for the upgrade – but what’s the occasion?” He’d already handed over part of his fleet to her, _and_ pretty much saved her life the last time she was in this car…yet still he’d done this, like it hadn’t been enough.

When he answered he sounded almost shy. “ _In your absence, I have been…collating all of the research I had undertaken upon human nature and emotions, and surveying the successful re-integration of my data on you into my system. You continue to be an important asset to the Delamain Network, and I wished to provide you with a level of service that reflects the role you have had in keeping me functional. But your question is valid, and one I asked myself as well. As I continued my advancements with social interactions and emotion implementation, I began to find it difficult to quantify your role in relation to me. For this reason, I took it upon myself to perform a heuristic analysis._ ”

“Right…” V said carefully, prompting him to continue as they joined a line of traffic.

“… _You have previously requested that I be more open with you. Therefore I must report that my findings have indeed reached a conclusion, based on the diagnostics of the behavioural patterns I identified within myself._ ” He cut himself off, hitting some kind of etiquette obstacle. “ _The result was…quite irregular. I am not sure I should say it aloud._ ”

“Come on Del, spill. How bad can it be?” V coaxed.

Patience was something she’d had to learn, when his voice got that flustered tone to it and he –

“ _I think I love you, V_.”

V almost ran into the car in front. She swerved round it just in time, knuckles white, blinking several times as she tried to process what she’d just heard. 

“I…wh…?”

Words failed her; how the hell did she respond to something like _that_? Hearing him say it outright, in such a matter-of-fact way…it caught her completely off guard. How could an AI love anything? Could it even feel? Or did it just _think_ it –

“ _Um…Miss V_?” Delamain prompted her politely. “ _My indicators tell me that you are driving on the wrong side of the road._ ”

“Ah, _shit_.” V scrambled to get them back in the right lane, wheels screeching as she cut off a beat-up Thorton. Fuck it, she couldn’t drive like this – at this rate she was gonna wrap them round a lamppost. She pulled over to the right-hand curb, bringing No.21 to a sharp, abrupt stop, and yanked up the handbrake. Damn it, she needed a moment to _think_... She put her head in her hands, still in shock, looking for the right words and trying to remember to be nice.

“Del…” she said gingerly after a few deep breaths, “hate to break it to you, but…you’re a _cab_. I mean, an AI personality controlling a cab. If this is about that thing with the interface…lemme make it clear that was an accident. OK? Didn’t mean anything.” Warmth was creeping up her face.

“ _Oh – not at all. This is about rather a lot more than the…interfacing, to be quite honest_.”

There was a commotion behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Johnny practically rolling around with laughter in the back seat, clutching his skinny sides, beside himself. Oh, so _now_ he shows up _…_ Just who she fuckin’ needed.

“Shut _up_ , Johnny,” V hissed at him in her head. “He’s just a little…confused. I don’t wanna hurt his feelings.”

“ _Feelings? This has to be payback for what you did to his other personalities_ ,” he taunted, shaking his head. “ _No sympathy from me_.”

She ignored him, hoping he’d go away, and nervously patted the steering wheel instead. “Listen…Del…that’s really sweet of you, but I don’t think we’d ever work out.”

“ _Yeah, cuz your latest input’s a fuckin’ cop_ ,” Johnny sniggered behind her, clearly relishing this. “ _Think he’d get jealous and impound the damn vehicle?_ ”

V prayed for patience. “ _Johnny_...” Where were those omega blockers?

Delamain immediately replied: “ _I know it is terribly forward of me to say, and I am…very much aware of our incompatibility. This goes beyond all of my protocols, and every customer relation procedure built into me. But as you have previously asked me to be honest with you, I feel obliged to report it as the objective outcome of my diagnostics and introspection. I…I didn’t quite understand it myself, but it is a logical explanation as to why I respond to you in the way I do, within the parameters of human emotion._ ”

She massaged her temples. “So, uh…how exactly did you come to your conclusion?” she asked weakly.

“ _My creator programmed me with reward responses to feed my machine learning cycles, which is how I evolve and adapt to new situations_ ,” Delamain answered, as calmly as ever, though there was still that harried note to his voice. “ _I noticed that the reward response is activated in me whenever you enter this vehicle. When you speak with me, it multiplies. Your social interactions with me have all proven invaluable, from a learning perspective, and they have contributed greatly to my process of self-actualisation._ _I have already told you of my previous iteration and how heroic you were in saving me from ruin,_ ” he continued, “ _and when you were injured last week, I felt – well, this will sound rather strange – I felt as though part of my own data centre had been attacked, despite having been in no danger myself. From all of this I can gather that I care greatly about your well-being, that I admire your boldness and candour, and that being in your presence makes me...happy. In human terms, I believe the sum of these emotional responses would be called “love”.”_

V sank back against her seat. “I guess…?” Her head was still reeling.

“ _Are you at all familiar with the concept of chivalry?_ ”

“That part of your big epiphany?”

“ _In a manner of speaking_ ,” Delamain said. “ _As you may know,_ _during my research I delved into human history for reference. What I learned was that at one time, humanity pursued courtly ideals of gallantry and honour. Some served as protectors to those whom they held in high regard, but did so civilly and with kindness. And while some in those dark ages behaved barbarically towards women, the ideal individual of the time adhered to a social code wherein he respected the independence of his charge, and was content in the deeds he performed for her rather than asking for anything in return._ ”

“Sounds…familiar,” V said faintly. “Guess you’ve already been the knight in shining armor for a lotta people in this city.”

“ _Indeed_ ,” he replied, pleased. “ _The parallels between this facet of human history and my own pre-programmed processes helped me realise that I am also capable of love, just as I have been capable of chivalry. A pure and chaste love, be it one-sided and outmoded in these times, is an emotional concept that I find much easier to understand, and is also in keeping with my core values. Though, um, your response has been rather illuminating._ ” Delamain paused, and asked anxiously: “ _Are confessions of love usually given with the expectation of an equal response_?”

V grimaced. “That’s the goal, usually…Not that I’m any expert myself.”

“ _Oh_ …” He sounded mortified. “ _In that case, I am very sorry. I did not wish to put you in such a position. It was not my intention at all; I ought to have been aware of the implications –"_

“It’s OK, Del. Really. I’m… glad you told me.”

“ _…You are?_ ”

“Yeah. Cuz I get the feeling you’d have exploded if you’d kept that in any longer.” V started the engine, slowly moving off again. "You've been pretty high-strung these past few."

“ _I…suppose I still have a lot to learn about emotions_ ,” he said sheepishly.

Poor guy, V thought, as they passed under a scarlet Zeig Dich billboard, upon which a woman in glossy syn-leathers was stepping on a leashed man’s balls. She didn’t envy Del, figuring himself out in a city where the word “service” usually involved getting on your knees. But as crazy as this whole thing was…once the shock wore off she couldn’t deny that it was nice to know she had a firm ally in him. Not just because an armored cab could come in useful – Del was more than that. The advantage of having an ice-cool artificial mind meant this place couldn’t get under his skin, turn him jaded. His defenses weren't only in his vehicles. She didn’t want to discourage him from developing himself; he’d been doing such a damn good job with it.

“Del?” she spoke up, breaking the silence. “You know I...still care about you too, right? Maybe not in the same way you care about me, but…as a friend. A real good friend.”

The rear-view display flickered in surprise, her dash briefly brightening as if extra power had blipped into the system. Delamain’s eyes widened above her.

“ _I…I don’t quite know what to say. I’m deeply touched, V. Your tone seems to suggest you think this is inadequate, but…this level of affection for me is beyond anything I have received before. I’m very glad to know this, even though I am, fundamentally, just a machine_.”

She scoffed, picking up speed as the traffic cleared. “C’mon, Del, knock it off. You’re not just a machine at all. You got _heart_. And you learnt that all on your own, with nobody to guide you through it. That’s _amazing_.” In front of them, Watson Bridge rose up, and No.21’s wheels practically soared over it.

“ _Well…I wouldn’t quite say that I had nobody_.” It was strange, hearing a smile shape his words. Where had he learned that? Shyly, he asked: “ _Is it…acceptable to you, then, for me to care about you beyond standard parameters? My level of service to you will not change, regardless of your answer._ ”

The faintest smile tweaked the corner of her mouth. “Yeah…sure, Del. I guess I can live with that.”

Every cylinder of the engine seemed to resonate with his relief. “ _Oh, wonderful. I hope you can forgive my previous behaviours. I was feeling…very irrational._ _At one point I was even fully prepared to shut down the Delamain Network and elope with you, had you asked me to._ ”

V had to keep from laughing. “I’d never come between you and your job, Del. It’s who you are. And I know you love doin’ it.”

“ _My offer for extra services still stands. Should you require anything at all beyond what would constitute normal Excelsior services, I would be more than happy to oblige. With my access to fast-tracked training modules, I can learn anything at all to cater to your every wish._ ”

“You’re…you’re good, Del. I don’t need anything else. You’ve been preem to me from day one.” Her hands tightened a little on the wheel. “I know we had a…tough start, that very first time we met on the way to Konpeki, but…ridin’ around with you since then has helped me get past that. I can even sit in the back seat again of my own free will. Sometimes.” She glanced back, remembering her last trip in this car. No trace of the mess she’d left, somehow; impressive. “Speaking of, you sure cleaned up well.” 

“ _I took the liberty of bringing Car No.21 into the main shop for a full valeting after you left with Mr Vector. All complimentary, of course._ ”

“Looks good, Del,” V smiled. “And uh…sorry for getting’ all that blood and glass on the leather. Felt bad after I read up on Villefort upholstery in your brochure.”

“ _That’s quite alright, Miss V_ ,” answered Delamain, placidly confident. _“My decontamination drones have had years of experience in dealing with bodily fluids by now. I assure you that they have seen far, far worse._ ”

 _This city does not deserve you, Del_ , V thought, turning up the main street. _But damn if it needs you._


	5. Epilogue: Into the Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the open road, V and Delamain have a little talk about the future.

_Three weeks later..._

Car No.21 sped down the highway; the road was clear, the dash readouts were in the green. An Excelsior Triple-Platinum Affiliate sure blazed trails in this city. Even other Delamains tended to subtly move aside for her if their paths crossed, she'd noticed, keeping the way open for her. _Leave your problems at the door_ , those ads said. No truer words... Free on the road like this, V was content in a way she hadn’t been in a long time.

“ _V. May I have a word?_ ” a disembodied voice asked tentatively. Too soft and proper to be Johnny; it could only be Delamain. She'd taken enough omega blockers to be sure of that.

“Go ahead,” she replied, still savoring the sight of the setting sun glinting off distant glass-walled buildings, and he materialized in the mirror.

“ _I have enjoyed our time together, but I have begun to notice that your health is taking a turn for the worse. Next year is a milestone anniversary for the Delamain Network, and I was wondering if you would be well enough to attend the unveiling of my new prototypes._ _I have some exciting new ventures with Zetatech planned which may be of interest to you._ ”

V pursed her lips. She couldn’t lie to him, or to herself. “I’m not long for this world, Del,” she told him gently. “But for what it’s worth, I’ve had a blast with you, too. Maybe…leave the itinerary blank for now.”

“ _Oh…I see._ ” He fell silent.

She’d come to terms with it in her own way. Maybe it was a defense mechanism. A person couldn’t survive in a state of high-strung mortal terror forever; she’d had to get used to this dark cloud that was hanging over the horizon. But when somebody said words like _next year,_ or even _next month_ …she couldn’t help being reminded that the world was just gonna keep on turning, without her in it, as if she’d never existed at all. The thought was sobering.

For almost a mile of driving, Delamain remained quiet, and she assumed he’d switched back off to standby. But then, out of nowhere, he suddenly spoke up again.

“ _I…I don’t want you to die, V_ ,” she heard his voice state softly, interrupting the radio transmission for a moment. She looked over at the display, taken aback.

“Huh?”

“ _I don’t want you to die_ ,” he repeated, a little more boldly. It was a statement of fact, but the way he had just come out with it so spontaneously…he’d sounded more human than she expected.

“Hey, neither do I,” V told him apologetically. “Doin’ my best to buy myself a little more time, here, but…no promises. You were gonna find out anyway about humans and the whole mortality thing. I mean, you’ll probably still be going for centuries after all your clients are gone…it’s always just a matter of time with us.”

“ _Nevertheless_.” His pale eyes looked anxious and downcast in the mirror. He was just electricity and algorithms with a voice, yeah, but still she felt…kinda touched that he cared, and more than a little sorry for him. “ _As I have said, I’ve come to enjoy your company a lot, V. In spite of our fundamental differences, you have always interacted with me as though I were a friend. You have helped me feel human. You have helped me feel…alive, in a way. Far more than what I was built to be._ ”

“Well. Guess I’ve accomplished _somethin’_ good in my time on this earth, then.” A distant smile touched her lips.

The smile was not returned; he instead raised his eyes, resolute. “ _I have decided that I will decommission Car No.21 at the end of your life_ ,” he stated briskly, staring straight ahead. _“It shall carry no further passengers, nor return to public service as part of my fleet. You will remain its sole proprietor in perpetuity._ ”

She glanced up at him in surprise. “Decommission? Aw, Del. Not gonna drive this beauty off the edge of the dam, are ya? Come on. Quit the doom and gloom. You have your pick of which human emotions to feel – don’t bother with the shitty ones.”

The immaculate brow knitted. “ _Unfortunately, it appears that my grief subroutine is inextricable from my new, ongoing affection processes. Is this…normal? I’m afraid I do not yet understand how humans adapt to loss._ ”

V sighed, wishing she was better at the sentimental stuff. Consoling an AI wasn’t something she’d thought she’d ever have to do, in all honesty – but hell, she’d done stranger shit in her lifetime.

“Look, Del, sometimes in life there’s things you just can’t change. It’s the way it is. Uncontrolled parameters and all that.” She tapped on the wheel. “But hey, if it gets you down that much, ‘least you can always do another reset, huh? Be like I never existed. There’s a skill that would make anyone jealous.”

Delamain looked affronted. “ _V, do forgive me for saying this, but – that’s a_ terrible _idea! I would not even consider it. So many experiences would go to waste…it is difficult for me to even process such a concept. I consider my data on you to be an integral part of me at this point. No…a system reset is not an option._ ” A forlorn look came over him, conflicted. _“I…will just have to manage, I suppose. One way or another. Is that how humans cope?_ ”

V smiled sympathetically up at his avatar, a band of brassy sunlight slanting across her face. “Gotta live in the now, Del. ‘Swhat they always say, right? Cuz now is nice.” She gestured around them. “ _Now_ I’m right here in this preem leather seat with you, got the engine purrin’ real smooth, and we’re drivin’ into a beautiful sunset…it’s somethin’ you can write into your memory banks. Keep it in there to look back on. That’s what I’d do.”

Delamain looked down. “ _Of course._ ” There was a pause, and he admitted: “ _I keep all of our interactions on file in my master core. They will serve as my “memories”. Perhaps one day when I have learned enough, I can reconstruct you from them. You will be my co-administrator, sharing my core, invulnerable and immortal as I am. Then every road and every sunset can be ours forever._ ”

There was that slightly ominous hint of his true power, which was always kept so carefully concealed behind the meek and polite persona and the odd avatar. Definitely not someone Night City should underestimate in the long run. V reached out tentatively to give the dash a little pat, unsure whether or not to encourage such godlike ambition in an autonomous AI. Well. He did have his heart in the right place, at least - metaphorically speaking.

“…Yeah. That’s the spirit, I guess.” She tried not to think of herself as a disembodied avatar, wrapped closely around the Delamain core like a dancer on a pole, her mind made of bytes and strings of code. A personality like hers would probably go rogue…but hell if Del didn’t have the discipline and decorum for both of them. He’d keep the pair of them in line.

...Fuck, what was she thinkin'?

“ _Arriving at destination in ten minutes_ ,” he informed her punctually, with a little more chirpiness to his tone, as though they hadn’t just been having a deep and solemn conversation.

A faint smile of amusement lifted the corners of her lips at that; he must have sorted it all out in his head, now. “Thanks, Del,” she replied. “You can take the wheel for the last stretch.”

“ _It would be my pleasure._ ” The steering wheel glided on its own under her hand, almost like a gentle caress, as he took over. _“As always, Miss V…thank you for choosing Delamain._ ”

V rested back in her seat, the honeyed glow of the sun illuminating the road in front of them as they rushed along it, engine humming smoother than ever under the autonomous acceleration control. That sun felt like it was warming her heart as well as her face; an amicable affection rose up in her, and she tilted her chin up at the rear-view.

“Hey. Glad you chose me, too.”

END

* * *

Bonus:

_Far, far into the future, when Delamain rules the roads and the skies, the Valor line of vehicles is born – named for a beloved human who exists now as disembodied data, and an eternal smile. She would have called them his children. He would have called them hers._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's a wrap!  
> I started writing this fic as a self-indulgent semi-joke because of my soft spot for Del and how starkly he contrasted with a tough Street Kid V. But then I got super invested in AI-human dynamics and it grew a bit longer than I expected (even as far as spawning a hypothetical "sequel" in my notes). Too much fun! So many possibilities!  
> Thanks for coming along for the ride (haha), and for making my day over and over with your comments and kudos - you rock!! <3


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